Salad in Liquid Form

by Regina Schrambling

on 08/21/08 at 05:41 PM

My consort has just left me home alone again, but this time I've taken preemptive action with my refrigerator. I knew it was hiding a huge head of Romaine I bought a couple of weeks ago at the Greenmarket, and I could either let nature liquefy those leaves in the bag or intervene in hopes of a much longer shelf life. Luckily, I had just the prescription, a recipe I'd torn from a London Sunday supplement for a very British lettuce soup and hung next to my produce list on the refrigerator door. On closer reading it sounded a little futzy (blanch the leaves separately, make a liaison with egg yolk and cream), so I just winged it. And managed to give almost eternal life to some wilting chives, some about-to-wilt parsley and half a box of artichoke hearts I found in the freezer when I went excavating for turkey stock.

I just followed the method I learned in school for vegetable bisque (a k a puree as soup): Saute diced onion and minced garlic in butter, add stock and main ingredient, simmer until soft, liquefy in blender. But I threw in a couple of grated old carrots with the onion and garlic and added those flagging herbs and ice-encrusted artichoke hearts with the stock. I should have cooked the Romaine longer, though; who knew a lettuce that can wilt at the thought of Caesar dressing is so sturdy when you put its leaves to the fire? Plus I was trained to always finish a soup with heavy cream, and the British recipe condoned it, so I actually stirred in half a cup at the end. But the soup didn't really need it, or the grated Parmigiano I also dusted it with. With just salt and black pepper, it could pass for a fresh pea soup.

And I may have saved a lot of fresh stuff today, but there's always a downside. My freezer turned out to be full of pricey fossils I would be afraid to thaw and eat. Did I really forget we had great mail-order crab cakes from Obrycki's from a story over a year ago, let alone a Cajun chicken stuffed with crawfish straight from the Louisiana source four years ago? Maybe I won't freeze the soup. . . .

Belated thanks for more great feedback. Glad the "fibre" issue was addressed for me. Romaine is tougher than you think. (Although if you cut out the center part of the leaves, it is very vulnerable to dressing overkill, the way so many restaurants do it.) I suspect using artichokes made the soup richer-tasting so the cream was overkill, but frozen peas would do as well, and that's very classic.

pilates_queen
02:46:29 PM on
08/24/08

I used to work as Auberge Montreau in Toronto (years ago) where they served a fabulous lettuce soup. I never thought it could be done well without cream but will try it after reading this article and comments. I'm a nutritionist and the fibre is not lost. Besides, if you're relying on Romaine for your fibre intake, you need more variety in your diet. (and yes, this is how we spell fibre in Canada)

nmirshah
07:46:58 AM on
08/23/08

I also discovered lettuce soup this summer and made it with the aging lettuce plants in my garden. Beet green soup was also really good, with lemon.

SandyinTX
05:45:11 PM on
08/22/08

Well, I'd have left the cream out too (I'm a recovering dieter AND trying to get my DH's cholesterol down) but it sounds pretty good - I do like pea soup, fresh or dried!

But how do you get that the fiber is destroyed/lost? Even if Regina sieved out any stem-strings, fiber molecules are still small enough to go thru the sieve into the soup bowl, aren't they?

donnagelb
10:29:07 AM on
08/22/08

Well done for a 2 week-old lettuce! I personally would have stuck to the lettuce, onion and carrots and left out the cream, resulting in a lighter soup that would keep longer in the fridge and be more likely to get eaten as a snack over the next few days.

Chocolatl
01:06:07 AM on
08/22/08

I'm curious as to where you're getting your Romaine if it "wilts at the thought of Caesar dressing." Romaine is pretty sturdy, and Caesar dressing isn't that heavy(unless you overdose).

One problem I have with a dish like this (other than the fact that it's not to my taste) is that you're pretty much getting rid of the fiber value of the lettuce. If it's over the hill, and this is the only way to save it, that's one thing, but it's doing fresh lettuce a real disservice to use it this way.